I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales

by Lawrence Patchett

  My second kick came off the side of my shoe, and with my third I made the carpark, Lucien running towards the chains, then checking for traffic before going into the carpark to scoop it up.

  ‘Hang onto it now,’ I said, calling ahead. ‘Watch for cars, please.’

  He waited for me, still getting his breath back. Together we crossed the carpark and made for the footpath, Lucien puffed and carrying the ball. Moisture had darkened his headgear where it met his neck. He’d worked up a sweat. What a good kid, I thought.

  We walked on a bit and I saw our car up ahead. My girlfriend was back from Porirua—Lucien hadn’t seen it yet. He was trundling along beside me in his boots, listening to their crunching on the asphalt.

  ‘Salt and vinegar’s not my favourite,’ he said, suddenly.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Salt and vinegar—that man gave me salt and vinegar chips. They’re not my favourite.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘What flavour did you select?’

  ‘Original.’

  ‘Yeah, I like original too,’ I said. ‘But salt and vinegar’s not too bad.’

  He studied his boots as he thought about this. ‘I don’t not like it,’ he said. ‘It’s just not my favourite.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Mum’s back,’ he said, and ran ahead.

  I lunged to grab his shoulder, to pull him back. He’d run straight into the intersection, almost.

  ‘Wait please, Lucien,’ I said. ‘Remember? Taihoa, then tītoro, then hikoi.’

  He stood very still and sighed, looked in all four directions, then walked with exaggerated slowness beside me to the other side—then ran ahead again, plunging through our gate and front door and into the kitchen. Inside I heard him shout, heard his mother exclaiming over him. She was happy to see him, I could hear it. The break had refreshed her.

  I was still on the footpath outside. Gingerly I removed my bag and massaged my neck. It was thoroughly cramped again, and my shirt was damp with sweat. Up ahead the street was clear of traffic, the sun pounding down bright and unrestrained on the asphalt. Behind me the car contracted and clicked, still hot from the trip to Porirua and back. I pushed through our gate and went in. Lucien’s arms were round her neck. Peering past his headgear she smiled at me. I removed my bag and smiled back.

  THE MAN BESIDE THE POOL

  The contest was on the other side of Sydney, in the Manly tidal pool. The tram to get there would cost tenpence. We’d have to borrow half of that. Just getting to the pool would leave us short on rent—already we had no food left. But I thought I had a chance. I thought I had endurance. I’d run long races before; as a boy I’d swum our local ponds and creek. And if joblessness had taught me nothing else, it had taught me patience. It had taught me how to be hungry and carry on, how to be tired and still wait.

  All the same, when I put those last coins in the tram-conductor’s palm, I felt my stomach lurch. Now everything was at risk. Gripping the hand-strap I looked out the window and felt sick.

  Seated not far away from me, my family had more strength. Helen’s face was thin but serenely distant; she was savouring the rare tram trip. Rocking with the movement, Frank’s closed and dreaming eye rested on her chest. He was not yet three months.

  Outside, Pittwater Road went past, then Belgrave Street, then we came alongside the baths. The walls were hung with notices of the endurance swim. Among the people walking in I saw two men who surely were contestants. They had the strong backs and shoulders of real swimmers, the slow and sleepy walk.

  While I stared at them Helen stood and put a hand high on my back.

  ‘Doug,’ she said. ‘We’re off. It’s our stop.’

  We stepped down and joined the line heading for the baths. In our bags I’d put axle grease for me, and blankets for Helen and Frank. While I contested they would sit and sleep in the seats.

  Some hold-up inside the pool delayed us at the gates. Grown used to waiting in lines, we all queued up. The odd one among us stood out young and strong, a fine swimming athlete, but most looked like us—grey-faced, patient, ill-fed.

  The baths were open-air and tidal. Coming through the gates I felt sea-breeze. Already the contest had been running for two days and a night. Dark heads of swimmers dotted the chopped wavelets. Some talked to each other, some sang in groups.

  While Helen set up camp I went round the pool perimeter. At the registering desks a man sat and smoked. He took signatures and gave out documents, all the while squinting to scan the pool through its shifting light.

  ‘Take some rule-sheets, mate,’ he said. ‘Sign them, give them back.’

  Standing before his desk I made a show of studying the documents.

  At last he looked up, his face wreathed in cigarette smoke. The need to explain seemed to tire him out. ‘It’s a rolling start,’ he said. ‘Your time starts when you hit the water. Stops when you come out. If yours is the longest time, you win. It’s simple, mate.’

  I nodded. I didn’t need the rules spelt out. I was stalling for something else. We’d hoped for food; I couldn’t ask him yet.

  ‘No touching the floor or sides,’ he said. ‘That’s it. That’s all that’s on those sheets.’ He dragged on his smoke, glanced at the pool again but then his eyes flitted back.

  It seemed I’d broken his entrancement; he roused himself to chat.

  ‘I should tell you that you’re up against it. Some of these have been swimming two days already, and a couple of them are champs. Plus you’re a bloke.’ With his smoking hand he indicated my thin arms and legs. ‘And you haven’t got much ... condition. But you never know. Good luck.’

  ‘I’ll bring these back,’ I said.

  Smoke still burning in his hand, he studied my face. ‘You’ve got someone up there haven’t you? A hungry kid?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He smoked and smiled, content to know things fell just as he expected.

  I walked back round. As I came near our spot a swimmer gave up and dragged out. Right in front of me he went towards his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, water shivering to the concrete.

  Wordlessly she wrapped him in a towel. She rubbed his arms and head and watched the pool beyond, the remaining contestants’ heads.

  Back in the seats Helen had made a camp with our bags pinning down laid-out blankets. Now she was swaddling Frank.

  I handed her the rule sheets and, while she studied them, knelt to finish wrapping Frank. He blinked and stared while I nuzzled his cheek. I bent down so close I could hear his tiny breath. For a long time I’d found it difficult to look straight at Frank, but suddenly I ached for this plain contact, this listening to his breath.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Helen. ‘This is it.’

  ‘You found something?’ I said, not standing up.

  ‘There’s a thing here about eating first. The rules make you swear you’ve had “adequate” food before you can compete.’

  I continued playing with Frank. ‘Big man,’ I said, tickling his wrapped-up stomach. ‘Big man!’

  ‘Doug,’ said Helen. ‘Would you describe the food you’ve had as “adequate”?’

  I winced.

  ‘This is our chance,’ she said. ‘They’ll have to feed us both. I’ve got Frank.’

  She smiled in unaffected triumph. I couldn’t return it.

  Of course I hadn’t eaten adequately. That was the whole point of entering the contest. We’d had two cuts of bread last night and hot tea and nothing else. We hadn’t eaten properly since Monday’s charity food-packet. Still I couldn’t look at Helen while she smiled like that. I found nothing to celebrate in the fact I’d had to drag her to a contest so she could beg a scrap to eat.

  ‘Can I grease up first?’ I said. ‘I’d like to go in straight after I sign those sheets.’

  ‘Let’s get the food first, Doug,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. You’ll need your strength.’

  Without reply I finished with Frank. She
leaned across and hoisted him. We picked down through the seats, the crowd and contestants for a moment ceasing their banter to watch us walk.

  The same attendant—the smoking one—looked neutrally at me, at Helen, at Frank.

  ‘I’ve had no food since yesterday,’ I said. ‘I can’t sign this document.’

  He leaned back and called the pool manager from the office behind him. This Mr O’Neill glanced over us once and waved an approving, dismissing hand.

  ‘You’re not the first,’ he said.

  The attendant went inside and returned with beef tea in two bowls. The meat smell wafted ahead of him and fired my stomach. I tried not to reach too eagerly to take it.

  ‘It’s lukewarm, sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It will be very good,’ I said.

  I tried to drink it slowly but couldn’t, gulping and spilling it on my chin and chest, while at my side I heard Helen slurp. Twice I struck and chewed luscious knots of meat.

  We finished and he took away the bowls and returned with a bar of melting chocolate, two-thirds of which I forced on Helen, saving a third for myself. Its gluey thickness stuck in my mouth, shocking and good.

  ‘You’ll get used to that,’ said the attendant. It was the food piped to contestants—chicken broth and melting chocolate.

  His eye roved over us, over Frank. ‘If you like I’ll teach your wife how to use the funnel and pipes.’

  Helen was licking chocolate from her fingers; suddenly she blushed and smiled broadly.

  ‘Do you understand?’ he said, to me. ‘Your wife will collect the broth and chocolate from me and pipe it to you, using the funnel and pipes. You don’t have to eat it all. Once the food leaves this desk, I don’t care what happens to it.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  This time he spoke more gently. ‘Don’t look like that, mate. It’s just food. It doesn’t matter what happens to it.’

  Helen took my arm. ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ she said. ‘We’re grateful.’

  In the short silence the pool sounds came, water slopping on concrete, supporters calling out.

  ‘How old’s this one?’ said the attendant, meaning Frank.

  ‘Sixteen weeks,’ lied Helen.

  The attendant studied Frank’s small and sleeping face. ‘Well, good luck.’

  For a moment we all looked at each other, acknowledging the basic facts. Under my best clothes, I was in borrowed swimming trunks. My wife and son were poorly fed. These times didn’t care what dignities were stripped from you, they didn’t care how you were reduced.

  We all turned at a noise of men behind us, grateful to be distracted.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  At the poolside a ring of photographers had gathered, partly obscuring a knot of swimmers who trod water and smiled up.

  ‘There’s your three champs,’ said the attendant. ‘One of them will win—that’s how it looks, at least. They’re all swimming champs of some sort.’

  I couldn’t see two of these swimmers. The photographers were hooped round them, journalists taking notes. The one champion I could see was large and strong, a broad and smiling face. As I watched she trod and answered questions, then rolled a brown and powerful shoulder and re-emerged to loll on her back. From that position she talked to the journalists, laughing once or twice.

  Watching this swimmer I saw how hopeless was my cause, how far of the mark. She had that gift in the water, that easy way of rolling into a stroke. It drained my hope to watch her—to sense Helen watching her too—but there was also that old thrill I remembered from the track, when the best runners had streaked past me, with fleet and tearing grace.

  As swimmer’s grease was too expensive I’d mixed castor oil with axle grease. Dipping my fingers in the jar I greased both legs. From his close cocoon of blankets Frankie watched me work, his eyes clear and fascinated. I talked nonsense to him, forcing a bonhomie I barely felt. A strange night loomed for him on the seats. I couldn’t see how Helen could keep him warm enough. Even with my hands so greased I yearned to take him up.

  ‘Could you help me?’ I said. ‘Helen? I can’t reach my back.’

  I pulled off my shirt and rolled down my swimming costume straps. Immediately the sea-breeze stippled my belly and the hairs of my chest.

  ‘Just your back?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  I shivered as she dripped a cold T-shape of grease along my shoulder blades and neck. While she worked it in I watched the contestants. There was a lot of banter, spectators calling from the seats. All the time swimmers pulled from the pool and shivered towards their wives or husbands. Of all those left, the men were greatly outnumbered.

  Now Helen was working grease into my neck and scalp. She was lingering over the task, savouring our last contact. Occasionally she murmured to comfort Frank. Facing away from them both I felt the ripping grief of leaving them, the old familiar break. I’d not felt that since leaving for my old work.

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’ll do the rest.’

  As I bent to grease my chest and throat I felt people watching us, the newest contestants. I didn’t like it. I’d been out of work so long; I knew it showed in all our clothes and faces.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said.

  As I turned to face them both, Frank stared in shock, then screwed his face and cried.

  Cooing to him, Helen smoothed his muffled head. ‘It’s the grease on your face,’ she said. ‘You look so funny, Doug. It must be strange, for him.’

  I went to put my hand to Frankie’s cheek but it was darkly greased, and again he screamed away, his back arched in his super-cry, as we called it.

  Helen rocked him and said it was all right. She took a long time over it, and I knew she was reassuring us both.

  At last she faced me direct. I tried to smile in response.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said. ‘Wish me luck.’

  She put a hand to my face. With my face all greased it was a sticky contact.

  ‘Doug,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I feel better for the food,’ she said. ‘You’ve got more colour in your face. We’re all much better. Thank you for doing this.’

  I looked down at my greased feet. She didn’t expect me to win the contest. No one expected me to even get a place.

  ‘I’ll be in a long time,’ I said. ‘I won’t come out tonight.’

  ‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ she said. ‘Don’t take risks. Think of Frank.’

  I took one more look at Frank and went down to the water’s edge. When I toed it the water was chilly but oddly distant through the grease. I turned to see Helen in the seats. She was standing amid our camp. While I watched she frowned at her hand and, with a length of blanket, wiped off the grease.

  I’d entered races before, all of them on foot. I’d been in an athletics club. I was a middle finisher over five miles, neither slow nor very fast. I knew how to plan a race and, when it mattered, to keep running when it hurt. I might have been low on food and general health, but at least when I entered the pool I knew I’d shown endurance in the past.

  The water was not too cold at first. I had the grease. I did some lengths for warmth, sometimes bumping other swimmers floating in my path. Next I turned to float on my back. The water lapped my ears and neck. Sometimes I lifted my head to hear other contestants talk; some made friendly remarks but I stayed well back. I didn’t want to join them yet. As a runner I’d mostly raced apart from the packs, pacing my run to match my own pre-scheduled beat.

  As a break from swimming I flipped upright to tread water. I made out Helen’s camp and waved; in reply she held up Frank. Around her the crowd seemed dense and close—I’d entered late and interest was at its peak.

  It was hard to face the crowd at first. The husbands and wives were easy to spot. The breeze wasn’t strong, but they hunched into themselves in the way of people who’ve been forced to wait too long outside. Interspersed with these were peopl
e who’d come to watch. These had more money, they’d brought picnics. They pointed and made jokes. They shouted out their favourites and spoke to journalists. I was once the target of these types, it seemed for my homemade grease. I kept to the pool’s opposite side after that.

  I noticed the champs seldom looked up in the seats. All three were swimming near each other at this point. One floated on her back to read a newspaper someone had passed out; the other two sidestroked with their heads close together, occasionally passing chat. They’d been in two days and yet they still seemed at ease. They rolled and laughed and kept their laid-out shapes.

  In the seawater I soon began to get cold, and turned to counteract this, backstroking for warmth. I’d almost done a length when my elbow hit someone’s head. In panic I whirled about.

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ I said, treading water. ‘I didn’t see you at all.’

  The man didn’t speak, barely acknowledging what I’d said. He was treading water, but his legs no longer had the strength. He rose and sank and rose and used his arms to help—a desperate running motion, horrible to watch.

  ‘How long have you been in?’ I said.

  But he just gasped. He had had it. I heard someone’s voice. A woman was at the edge, calling him across.

  I turned and swam away. I looked up in the seats for Helen. She had a blanket over her shoulders. She bent in to Frank. I trod water and surged with anxiety for Frank. At six weeks he’d come through a breathing sickness we later knew to be asthmatic. In panic now I inventoried the blankets we’d brought. It was not enough. We could never do enough. Two months before I’d been in a printers’ works. We thought we’d been well placed; then I was retrenched.

  There was a clock on the wall near the attendant’s desk, and soon it was hard to avoid looking at it. Already this was the longest time I’d spent afloat. I was heavy in the water, my arms and legs tired from all my lengths. I’d swum too much for warmth. The sun was lowering and somehow exhaustion let the chill advance, the cold cutting straight through the grease. A light and constant shiver made my skin dance. When I touched my arm it was corrugated with goosebumps.